Advances in education, production efficiencies and capital, have tended to make the services of all workers in industry and the professions more valuable and productive. At the same time, modern responsibilities of family, community, and work, together with increased commuting distances, have contributed to a fast-paced life style for many. These demands often require that meals be eaten outside the home. Many of these take-out meals are consumed as a matter of expedience, and hence the relaxed serving pace and higher cost of a conventional sit-down restaurant may not be appropriate for a consumer seeking immediate service.
Convenience food facilities, either stand-alone, or in conjunction with supermarkets, convenience stores, or filling stations, fill the consumer need for a varied assortment of foods available for a minimum investment of time. Although fast service would seem to require many service personnel, modern serving arrangements have achieved high levels of food dispensing speeds by leaving many of the final food preparation services to the consumer, i.e.: pouring drinks, selecting condiments, and discharging straws, napkins, and stir sticks.
The self-serve counter at a conventional convenience store provides an open countertop area where drink dispensers, coffee pots, and the like may be readily accessed by the customer. Individual dispensing units for napkins, straws, utensils, and condiments have typically been mounted to the front wall of a cabinet below the countertop. The mounting of each dispensing unit has required that a hole of a particular size to suit that unit be bored into the cabinet, and that the unit be affixed to the cabinet with fasteners.
Because of the competitive and fast changing nature of many convenience marketing venues, it will sometimes be necessary to reconfigure the self-serve counter to meet variations in traffic flow, menu, and clientele. Custom mounted dispensing units, each in their own sized cabinet opening, are not readily adapted to rapid change-over. Furthermore, variations in customs and service needs over a wide geographic area make it difficult for designers of convenience outlets to prepare uniform furniture and cabinet designs, as each cabinet may need to be bored differently, depending on the final choice of dispensers.
To facilitate long term planning and rapid readjustment of cabinet configurations, a system of dispensers which are readily adaptable to change without structural modification to the cabinet itself would be highly desirable.